I've received a lot of reader mail lately about backups. It covers everything from the horror of discovering that a backup just won't restore and the slow-growing capacities of backup media to the frustrating complexities of most backup software. A fair number of readers say that the disasters of September 11 got them thinkingand worryingabout what they'd do if they lost all their data. I worry about that, too; the tragedy of the World Trade Center awakened many of us to our deep dependence on PCsand even more to the data we keep on them.

I wrote about backup and security shortly after the attacks, mainly from the perspective of corporate IT managers. In an ideal world, office workers wouldn't worry about backups; they'd be handled automatically over our office networks (and VPNs, for off-site computing) to supersecure off-site servers. Unfortunately, that world doesn't exist. Even if it did, we'd still worry about the data on our PCs at home.

Your Best Bet

Regardless of how you've been backing up your PC's hard drive, the old ways don't work any more. Floppy and Zip disks have long been overwhelmed by the capacity of modern hard drives; CD-Rs, too, though I confess I keep a CD-RW disc in my drive, and when I'm working on something important, I frequently drag a recent save over to it using DirectCD for a kind of ad hoc backup.

Iomega Jaz Drives, Travan tapes, and even DATs are similarly dwarfed. Even large-capacity DAT in autoloaders are simply outgunned with today's 80MB, 100MB, and larger disks.

For years, my quick-and-dirty answer has been to buy a second hard drive of the same capacity as my primary drive for each of my desktop PCs. By regularly copying the entire contents of the primary drive to this secondary unit, I build and have readily available something ideala duplicate drive I can swing into action by simply changing connectors. No tedious and worrisome restores: Just swap and go.

Of course, that doesn't do a thing for data security if the PC disappears or is lost in a physical catastrophe. More recently, I've been using big external SCSI hard drives for such ghost backups. This isn't as quick and convenient, and if I lose the primary hard drivethe main reason most of us worry about backupsgetting back in action takes longer. But it lets me move that backup hard drive to a safe place, perhaps even off the premises. (Do I always do that? Of course not. As in almost every backup scheme, the usermeis the weak link.)

Backing up an 80GB internal hard drive to an external drive with similar capacity takes a long time. But the new generation of big, fast USB 2 hard drives is changing that. A 30GB drive can be backed up to an external USB 2 disk in very little time. More to the point, the larger primary disks I'm now using can be handled in under half an hour.

I personally like Western Digital (WT) drives and recently put WD's new 100GB UltraATA drives in my desktop PCs. They're fast and reliable; look for the WD1000BBRTL models with 2MB internal buffers, because they're even faster. Actually, I put two of them in each PC for my primary or secondary, easy internal-backup scheme.

My Kind of Backup

What about expense? The drives are available for under $200 each; a pair costs under $400. That's less than I paid for my first, whopping 5MB hard drive for my IBM PC-XT 20 years ago. We regularly copy each machine's primary WD drive to its secondary WD drive overnight.

Then I got my hands on one of the new 120GB Maxtor 3000LE USB 2.0 external drives. Now I can copy everything from my primary drive to the external Maxtor drive, while I run out for a quick lunch. That's right: The USB 2 connection (via a Maxtor USB 2 plug-in card in each PC) backs up the half-full 100GB drive in my PC in about 20 minutes.

Now that's my kind of backup: fast, simple, and ready to copy onto a new drive if mine failsvia an amazing, sub-$300 backup system.

For individuals, I say dump those obsolete low-capacity drives and their unreliable media, forget backup software problems, and get a big external USB 2 drive. You won't regret it.

About the Author

Jim Seymour is a contributing editor of PC Magazine. A popular speaker at industry events, corporate retreats, and professional meetings, Seymour makes the complex simple and brings a real-world focus to computer technology applications. As the head of The Seymour Group, he supervises a technology strategy consulting practice that guides companies ... See Full Bio

Get Our Best Stories!

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.